(2) after the guard had already repeatedly punched him in the face while he was sitting in the car.

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739330
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739330To me this is horrifyingly corrupt and unjust, but somehow the citizens on that jury didn’t see it that way. I suppose that’s what happens when you’ve been trained to never question authority.
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739331
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739331Cory, I hope you’re reading these responses.

I hope you’re formulating some plan to throw our support the way of Dr. Watts.

Please tell me there’s something I can do.

]]>By: Ugly Canuckhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739590
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739590In Nazi Germany, petty crimes, especially those which challenged the Authority of the Authorties, were harshly dealt with, with prison work-camp time: while crimes committed by more important people were never mentioned, let alone investigated, tried and punished.
]]>By: Susanhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739348
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739348When I was stopped at the border by the Canadian police I was required to get out of the car.
]]>By: justanotherusernamehttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739606
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739606So apparently it’s perfectly OK for law enforcement to beat up ordinary citizens.

Apparently it’s also perfectly OK for law enforcement to blatantly lie about it afterwards.

None of this matters.

But asking the question: “What’s the problem?” gets you convicted to a jail sentence.

If that’s not fascism I don’t know what is.

]]>By: Roofmonkeyhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739355
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739355Border officials are the worst of the worst, not only in North America but worldwide. They represent the absolute power of the state to control who goes where, regardless of citizenship. And we all know what power does.
Anecdotally, the U.S. border guards at Sarnia (Michigan/Ontraio border)are abysmally stupid, disrespectful and arbitrary in their enforcement of search rules, quarantining my house plants (WTF?) in one pass and waving me through without so much as opening the back of my truck on another.
I do not feel even a tiny bit safer knowing these arrogant nimrods are tasked with keeping our borders secure. Good luck with your appeal, Dr. Watts.
]]>By: mccrumhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739362
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739362Precisely how I feel. The person being paid to be there has to be what I consider the “grown up.” When my child does things I do not appreciate or says things that are not inappropriate I do not physically abuse her. My job is to be responsible, get called names and keep my cool. I can physically overpower them but that’s not being a responsible grown up.

The people paid to be in certain situations (police, referees, coaches, whatever) need to be the grown up and not come down to the level of the child personna. People crossing at borders are allowed to ask “Why” as much as they want and yes it must get annoying, but the job is to keep the peace. Not keep the peace by any mean necessary.

Someone stating he/she was a juror has commented on the timesherald website:

“proudinjun wrote:
As a member of the jury that convicted Mr. Watts today, I have a few comments to make. The juryâ€™s task was not to decide who we liked better. The job of the jury was to decide whether Mr. Watts â€œobstructed/resistedâ€ the custom officials. Assault was not one of the charges. What it boiled down to was Mr. Watts did not follow the instructions of the customs agents. Period. He was not violent, he was not intimidating, he was not stopping them from searching his car. He did, however, refuse to follow the commands by his non compliance. Heâ€™s not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination. The customs agents escalted the situation with sarcasm and miscommunication. Unfortunately, we were not asked to convict those agents with a crime, although, in my opinion, they did commit offenses against Mr. Watts. Two wrongs donâ€™t make a right, so we had to follow the instructions as set forth to us by the judge.
3/19/2010 2:01:10 PM”

I suspect that even if a juror who decided Peterâ€™s fate tells it like it is as quite similar to Peter himself stated, there will be those who still want to make it out as what it most definitely was not.

]]>By: Dr.Dawghttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739879
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739879“What I can’t understand is why Dr Watts even asked a question in the first place. You’re crossing into another country, you should expect to be questioned and possibly searched. There are usually two sides to every story, and right now, we only have the one.”

This is a bit like Stockwell Day on the Niagara River. Watts was leaving the US to return to Canada, not entering that benighted land. He was stopped by US officials, not Canadian ones, under what authority I can’t imagine.

Now the prosecutor is seeking a habitual criminal ruling to enhance his sentence! This is fascism, pure, everyday American fascism, coming soon to a place near you.

]]>By: Mad Russianhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-740135
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-740135One thing that doesn’t seem to occur to many of the commentators for this article, The US is a Fascist Oligarchy masquerading as a Constitutional Republic. And with incidents like this, it may be harder for the US government to maintain the fiction of a democracy.

And to answer the comment about moving to a country that actually has real human rights protection: what country on Earth has decent protections?

To Friedrich Nietzsche is attributed the following:

“Everything the State says is a lie, & everything it has is stolen.”

]]>By: Nelson.Chttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739387
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739387If things go inconceivably bad and he gets thrown in jail for two years, then I suggest we send him care packages. Other than that, I don’t think there’s a lot that can be done to help at this point. If you have any psychic powers, you could try beaming happy thoughts at the judge, though my often-shaken faith in human nature prompts me to hope that the judge will take into account the misery that has been imposed on Dr Watts already and give him a suspended sentence.
]]>By: benherhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-740162
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-740162In USA, you do not cross border… Border Crosses YOU!
]]>By: turn_self_offhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739652
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739652the crazy thing is, he was not going into USA, he was leaving!
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739400
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739400NO, he had already passed through the US side and was then stopped randomly without the stop having been identified as such.
]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739403
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739403They haven’t any right, they just have might. Carl Panzram was wrong…

“You will find that I have consistently followed one idea through all my life, I preyed upon the weak, the harmless and the unsuspecting. This lesson I was taught by others : Might makes right.” –Carl Panzram

It’s sad to see how many people will suck up to a sociopath as soon as one manages to get a uniform. It’s not like there’s any shortage of psychos…

“We serial killers are your sons, we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there will be more of your children dead tomorrow.” –Ted Bundy

]]>By: ultranauthttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739915
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739915If those comments from jurors are genuine then I am amazed at their capacity for doublethink. This brings to mind the experiments that have shown most humans prefer to obey authority above all else. I recall hearing or reading about French researchers who very recently made a documentary about a fake game show experiment in which 80% of participants were ultimately willing to torture another person to death at the direction of a game show host. There is of course the famous Milgram experiments as well. And all those Good Germans and dutiful bureaucrats who were just following orders…
]]>By: Nadreckhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739663
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739663Well, Watts says in his blog that it is not the job of the jury “to ignore stupid laws”. I would strongly disagree: yes it is and that’s the whole purpose of the jury system. You are guilty of a crime if you are in violation of the statute you are convicted by a jury of your peers. The jury is ultimately there to make sure that a corrupt state doesn’t game the system to put away their personal enemies. Any rule system can be gamed and if all the jury is supposed to do is robotically go through a flow-chart of rules to determine guilt or innocence then they might as well be replaced by a Commodore 64 computer.

The principle is called jury nullification and up here in Canada it’s, for example, how we got rid of our anti-abortion laws. In the States the principle is (surprise!) under attack by the corrupt state but it’s not quite dead yet.

In my rape analogy, Dr. Wells could be a grandmother delivering a batch of cookies to a charity bake sale, or he could be thirteen year old on her way to choir practice. The point is, the frightened will look for reasons that the victim was not making herself vulnerable to attack; the grandmother looked too young, the choir girl trusted the choirmaster to give her a ride, therefore they must be guilty. This is ridiculous, and it gets harder to do when the victim is, for example, a six month old baby or a quadriplegic. Which is why those sorts of examples are invoked, to get it through people’s heads that rape is not about the victim being seductive, it is not about a desire, on the part of the perpetrator, to hurt someone. The drunken sorority girl was NEVER asking for it. All of this is an uphill battle in a society in which people can read “Lolita” and come away with the message that the child was a seductress, instead of a victim who was kidnapped and kept as a sex slave.

Ah, it’s a sick sad world indeed.

And the folks who insist that Dr. Wells should have behaved this way or that way, that this was his fault, they are the most frightened of all, you can fairly smell the fear coming off them, they are rank with it.

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739157
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739157I think it’s simply disgusting that the jury blindly accepted the prosecution’s decision, despite the fact that the spoken testimony from the officer differed from the written testimony.

And “choking him”? I’m sure the 51 year old science-fiction author flew into a blind, Canadian, lumberjack rage and mysteriously overpowered the officer, dragging him into the car to choke him, before getting out of the car with his wood cutting axe to attack the rest of the border patrol. And I’m sure at some point, according to the officers, his car had turned into a moose by that point.

Needless to say, I’m advising all of my friends to stay well away from America for the next little while, and refuse to go down there any time soon. I bet you they’ll say he’s a terrorist next. :/

]]>By: sic transit gloria C.F.A.http://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739930
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739930Ok, enough yelling about how horrible this is – what are we going to do about it?

Are there any grounds for an appeal? Somehow, a law that amounts to “don’t ask questions” doesn’t seem very constitutional.

Also, I’m not clear on this – was this the State of Michigan prosecuting him, rather than the federal government? It sounds like it. If he doesn’t appeal, or loses his appeals, it seems appropriate to mount a really big petition drive for a pardon. And another one to get this law fixed so that asking questions isn’t a felony.

]]>By: Dr.Dawghttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739946
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739946Send a note to the US Ambassador, David Jacobson, at embweb1@magma.ca. Correct title is Excellency. Be polite but firm about this gross miscarriage of justice.
]]>By: Chorskehttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739180
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739180Never, EVER get out of your car at a border crossing.

First, the officers have every right in the world to search your car as thoroughly as they deem fit. The fact that Dr Watts was protesting such a search seems odd to me.

Second, the officers have the obligation to control the situation. My girlfriend once exited my car at the Woburn-Coburn crossing between Quebec and Maine, and she was instantly swarmed by officers. She was firmly but nonviolently put back in the car. The officers explained that they can’t have people wandering around outside their cars while they are being searched or passed through customs- this is for the safety of other travelers and the officers themselves.

I wasn’t happy about how strongly they reacted, but the bottom line is: lesson learned. Don’t get out of your car at a border crossing.

I should add that, this one experience aside, I have found the US border guards to be exceptionally polite, chatty, reasonable people. Maybe it’s because I tend to cross at rural locations (St Stephen/Calais, Thousand Islands, Woburn/Coburn)? Perhaps. But I certainly find the US guards much nicer than their Canadian counterparts, who are rude.

*********
And under â€œobstructâ€ is â€œfailure to comply with a lawful orderâ€, and itâ€™s explicitly stated that violence on the part of the perp is not necessary for a conviction. Basically, everything from asking â€œWhy?â€ right up to chain-saw attack falls under the same charge. And itâ€™s all a felony.
*********
So what it came down to, ultimately, was those moments after I was repeatedly struck in the face by Beaudry (an event not in dispute, incidentally). After Beaudry had finished whaling on me in the car, and stepped outside, and ordered me out of the vehicle; after Iâ€™d complied with that, and was standing motionless beside the car, and Beaudry told me to get on the ground â€” I just stood there, saying â€œWhat is the problem?â€, just before Beaudry maced me.

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739189
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739189Who needs anarchists with jurors like these?
]]>By: MichaelChttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739190
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739190Thanks for rushing in with the defense of law enforcement officers who beat up someone for asking a question and then arrest him for it.
]]>By: Saskplannerhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739195
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739195I cross into the US pretty much every month.

Some of these US immigration people are not mentally balanced, they have an unhealthy disrespect for people backed up by unfair, unequal laws that pretty much let them get away with anything. Bad combination. The best thing to do is to NOT confront them, let them do their thing and let them feel ‘big and then get through.

It’s unfortunate this situation took place and I hope he gets out of it without going to jail.

]]>By: BookGuyhttp://boingboing.net/2010/03/19/peter-watts-found-gu.html#comment-739205
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-739205Watts’ post is very classy, especially given how very shitty the situation is. From what I can tell from reading all of this, there’s absolutely NO action you can take that guarantees you won’t be beaten, pepper sprayed, and arrested, and that’s more than a little troubling.
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